Part III

ZIONS

 Tuesday was spent in Zions.  Perfect day for a little bit of hiking.

 Weeping rock

 The Narrows..... which is a difficult hike through water and a narrow canyon.
Very, very cold water.

 We didn't take the camera because of the high likelihood of falling in.
There were some spots where we were up to our waist.
Freezing.
Braden and I want to go back in August when the temperature is up and the current is down.

Part II

SNOW CANYON

The boys went down into some cool caves

 Sand.  Everywhere.

 Beautiful landscape

So attractive.

The sole purpose of this is to embarrass Braden one day.

Lunch!!

Hiking, hiking hiking!

This hike is called "Pioneer Names" and has names written in axle grease from the 1800's

Before.

Today, because I know how important this is too you, I am going to give you the BEFORE tour of my farm.  Or is it a ranch?   Sometimes I get confused.  Do you need a cow to make it a ranch?  If so then we will call it a farm.  Hang in there... I get even more random as we move on.

I am recording this for posterity so I can gloat over all my hard work when it is all grown up and beautiful.  Note: I use the words "my hard work" very, very loosely.

This is the "ranch-front".  Note the spindley little tree that is destined to grow up and be a magnificent, wonderful (insert name since I forgot) tree one day.  Grow fast little one, grow fast.

update:  Grandma Zee says this is a Maple tree.  Sounds good to me!

And here we have Cinderella.  She is a very good Cinderella and we love her.  I do know the name of this spindley little guy - Eastern Redbud. Rumor has it that it will also be beautiful.  Since everything looks dead right now, I will trust in rumors.

 This is the orchard.  I love my orchard, almost as much as I love Cinderella.  It has a Shinko Pear, Gleason Elberta Peach, Satsuma Plum, Ruby Jon Apple and Honey Crisp Apple.  I don't know this because I have a fabulous memory.  I know this because I saved the little tags that came with the splindley little trees.

This is the path to the back-forty.  In some parts of the country, the back-forty refers to acres.  Here it refers to the back 40 feet of my ranch.  Sometimes I call it Sherwood Forest.  Because I can.  

The stones are a project that is down the list a ways for Farmer Robert.  Someday they will be level and surrounded by pretty ground cover instead of weeds.

Cinderella planted two very small, dead-looking climbing rose bushes that she promised me will eventually go up and over our pretty arbor that is the entrance to the back-forty.  I have much faith in Cinderella.

Over here on the North side we have the garden.  I think it is very, very large.  Cinderella and Farmer Robert keep complaining it isn't big enough.  But really - how many veggies do we need??  Just eat more vitamins for heavens sake.  Farmer Robert's next project is a beautiful arbor with bench for our grape vines to grow over.

Grapes to eat; not ferment, stomp and drink like my Italian ancestors.  Unless of course, I take up that sort of thing in the future.

The fire pit and weeds.  Again, this is a project down the list.  Some day the fire pit will be raised up and the weeds will be obliterated.  I don't care too much, since I can make s'mores just as well in a flat fire pit as in a raised fire pit.  It doesn't take much to make me happy.

Stay with me here - this one requires a bit of imagination.  The three rock rings (made by Cinderella) hold blueberry plants. Yes- blueberry plants.  I don't have much faith that they will grow here, but I certainly won't be sad if I am proven wrong.

The space going towards the fence is for our chicken coop/rabbit hutch/wood shed.  And it is going to be the cutest little thing.  People are going to want to come visit just to see it.  And eat blueberries while cooking s'mores.  That is what multi-tasking farm people do, you know.

These are garden boxes.   I know you thought it was the beginning of a covered wagon and I was going to take my family west, but HAHA - you are wrong.  Professor honey-buns (do you like Farmer Robert or Professor Honey-buns better??  I can't decide) built this and did a fabulous job.  Now we have to fill them with dirt and plant little seeds.  Then we sing songs and dance around them when there is a full moon until they grow into edible things.

And this is Brody our cute little neighbor, who helped me kill weeds today.
And Shea, who didn't help with anything because she was getting ready to go to The Hunger Games, which is much, much more important than farming.
And Kamo, who doesn't do anything but cause trouble.

Thank you for going on my tour.

Pine Hollow

Today was a beautiful day for snow-shoeing!

No wind, lots of sunshine and snow.

 These two pictures show the sun setting behind Mt. Timpanogas.  

It was amazing!

First snow-hike and ice-sledding of the year...

Today we took Braden, his friend Jared, Shea and Jack up American Fork canyon.  There wasn't quite enough snow for snow-shoeing but we made do.

After the hike, we headed over to Mutual Dell one of our favorite sledding places from years ago.  Not too much snow, more like ice; but the kids had a blast sledding.

Old Faithful

Shea was the photographer for the photo's above...

I don't have a picture of her, but Tammy did 

get one of me photographing 

(and almost getting eaten by)

the buffalos.